Personally, however, I have no doubt about the wasteful 
character of slave labour. Let me give an example. At Njala 
the other day I saw a “bush ’’ house, for one of the agricultural 
instructors, being built by communal labour supplied by one 
of the surrounding chiefs. The number of men supplied was 
about 100, and the ‘‘ dash * (present) that would be paid to 
the chief for this labour worked out at about 1d. a day per 
head (assuming—yvhich is doubtful—that any appreciable part 
of it found its way into the labourers’ hands). At first sight 
this appears to be a very cheap form of labour, but further 
investigation showed that only some twenty-five of the men 
were working at any particular moment, and that the build- 
ing would therefore take three or four times longer to build 
than it should. There was no incentive to the slaves to work 
hard ; consequently 75 per cent. of the labour was wasted when 
it might have been agriculturally productive. 
(11) Slaves have no security of land tenure. It is true that 
Dr. Maxwell himself, in the extract quoted above, has 
sxplained how liberally ‘slaves of the house ’’ are treated 
in the matter of land, and Captain Stanley has laid 
great stress on this in his minute. Nevertheless the fact 
remains that any land which is given them to cultivate is 
theirs on sufferance only, and if they wish to redeem them- 
selves and strike out a new line elsewhere they forfeit all 
2laim to the plot on which they may have spent much labour 
(ii) The practical recognition by (tovernment of domestic 
servitude fosters the tendency for manual labourers to be re- 
garded as a servile class, and consequently manual labour itself 
is looked down upon by many who would both in their own 
interests and those of the Colony more profitably be engaged 
on the land or in some form of manual industry. A frequent 
excuse given by inhabitants of the peninsula villages for not 
doing more in the way of agriculture is that they cannot obtain 
“labour ’; they will not “‘ turn to” themselves—it would 
be infra dig—°‘ only slaves work on the land 
If you agree that a case for some action has been made out, it 
‘emains to consider which of the courses set out in this despatch 
t will be best to pursue. 
One of my four senior political officers (Captain Stanley) is in 
favour of the Gambia precedent ; two others (Mr. Ross and Mr. 
Hooker) advocate total abolition in four years’ time; the fourth 
(Mr. Bowden, who has been longest in Sierra Tieone) recommends 
total abolition from the beginning of next year. None of these 
recommends payment of any compensation, and all of them recom- 
mend that slaves brought into Sierra Leone from Liberia, for what- 
aver purpose, should ipso facto become free.